We are at SES Amsterdam today, which is a local SES event with many local speakers, but also some international stuff. One of the speakers is Martin Mc Donald of OMD. He delivered the keynote at this years SES Amsterdam. Below you can find the live blog of his session.

SEO has long time not been an industry, it was just about breaking the algorithm. Which was relatively simple. As an industry we broke PageRank. For some keywords it’s only possible to rank based on getting (buying) massive amounts of links. Now SEO is a wide part of online marketing. If you get SEO you get the rest of online marketing.

The future of the algorithm

Everyone has a social profile, only few people have the ability to make regular links on blogs or other websites. The data set of social is much bigger than links. Google algorithm has to shift to social signals. And it’s hard to break the social graph with money.

The future of the industry

We’re still growing up. What do we need to do to grow up?

1) Get shit done

Boards of directories are the no. 1 enemy of the SEO industry. Talk business, not search.
For example, don’t talk about getting more links, but activating brand evangelists.